The Black Bishop

I have crawled with my belly against the ground like a serpent. My back was bloody, and people tread upon me. I found my legs and my arms by the light of a sputtering candle, and only when I began to see my enemies did the flame go out. In darkness I despaired, and pressed my face to the ground in mourning. 

And from beneath the earth I heard a voice as solid as stone. I recognized it as the voice within the fire. I recognized the voice as mine. And it saith:

What is then to happen to these people when their gods die? Not presumed dead in the minds of men, as the ignorant claim, but well and truly vanish, with their absence keenly felt? Simply put...the music stops. Order gives way, slowly but inevitably, to chaos. The color drains from the leaves on trees, from the sparkling ocean waves, from the blush of a lover’s cheek. All is rendered gray, gray and silent and dark. 

The devout one looks and now sees his fellow men, once the favored of the gods, once the misguided but precious wards of the divine, now reduced to furless rats, biting and scratching and scuttling about in the dark, in the stink, in the shapeless, colorless void. For the devout one, all things rested on the strong shoulders of the gods. Without them, hope has fled. 

Please...I have languished here for so long...

...Suffered these stings and bites...

...Every hope I’ve had has been snatched from me...